/*
 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
 * contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with
 * this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
 * The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
 * (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
 * the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
 *
 *      https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 *
 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
 * limitations under the License.
 */
package org.apache.commons.beanutils2;

/**
 * <p>
 * A <strong>DynaClass</strong> is a simulation of the functionality of {@link Class} for classes implementing the {@code DynaBean} interface. DynaBean
 * instances that share the same DynaClass all have the same set of available properties, along with any associated data types, read-only states, and write-only
 * states.
 * </p>
 */
public interface DynaClass {

    /**
     * <p>
     * Returns an array of {@code PropertyDescriptor} for the properties currently defined in this DynaClass. If no properties are defined, a zero-length array
     * will be returned.
     * </p>
     *
     * <p>
     * <strong>FIXME</strong> - Should we really be implementing {@code getBeanInfo()} instead, which returns property descriptors and a bunch of other stuff?
     * </p>
     *
     * @return the set of properties for this DynaClass
     */
    DynaProperty[] getDynaProperties();

    /**
     * Returns a property descriptor for the specified property, if it exists; otherwise, return {@code null}.
     *
     * @param name Name of the dynamic property for which a descriptor is requested
     * @return The descriptor for the specified property
     * @throws IllegalArgumentException if no property name is specified
     */
    DynaProperty getDynaProperty(String name);

    /**
     * Returns the name of this DynaClass (analogous to the {@code getName()} method of {@link Class}, which allows the same {@code DynaClass} implementation
     * class to support different dynamic classes, with different sets of properties.
     *
     * @return the name of the DynaClass
     */
    String getName();

    /**
     * Instantiates and return a new DynaBean instance, associated with this DynaClass.
     *
     * @return A new {@code DynaBean} instance
     * @throws IllegalAccessException if the Class or the appropriate constructor is not accessible
     * @throws InstantiationException if this Class represents an abstract class, an array class, a primitive type, or void; or if instantiation fails for some
     *                                other reason
     */
    DynaBean newInstance() throws IllegalAccessException, InstantiationException;

}
